Their Hamartia
by Cynthia Salander
Summary: He sits there, holding her hand, wishing for a moment that she would be the first one to die.


_A/N: I am in love with this book. No, I really am in love with this book. Not like how a reader loves a really good book, but like how a girl loves an amazing and wonderful boy. _

_This is a one-shot of the scene described by Augustus in his eulogy for Hazel. He's in the ICU with her, and she's unconscious._

**Their Hamartia**

As the nurse turns around to leave the ICU, Augustus moves behind her back, so as to not get caught. The woman leaves the room without so much as glancing back. When the door slowly closes behind the nurse, he can't help but smile lightly, triumphantly. He feels like Sergeant Max Mayhem who'd just evaded a bullet.

His smile drops as he turns to see Hazel Grace. Her face pale, her eyes closed, he sees her chest rise and fall rhythmically, along with the half-dozen tubes connected to her.

He'd waited for almost a day and a half to see her, but now, he realizes that she would not have wanted him to see her like this. Fragile and helpless, vulnerable and dependent. _Like a child_, he thinks, but he knows that this is a childhood that _they_ may never grow out of. Even he wouldn't want to be seen like this.

He hears nothing other than the steady beeps from the various machines that are monitoring her vitals. He moves closer to the bed, watching the liquid that had filled her lungs, drip slowly into a transparent bladder. Brown and murky, water grants life to most, but in her case, it had been sucking it away instead.

He sits beside her on the bed and feels the proof for the hundredth time in the last few weeks, that the sacrifice of his limb a year ago had been fruitless. He winces in pain, holding his left knee. Metastasizing at an awfully fast rate, something was sucking _his _life away, too.

He breathes through the pain, his fingertips turning white as he clutches his knee tightly. Had she been awake, he'd have had to put on a façade of nonchalance for her sake, but with Hazel Grace sleeping beside him peacefully, he lets the façade crack and allows the pain to show on his face. The pain fades away reluctantly, but with a silent promise to return later with more intensity.

Augustus opens his eyes, wary of the pain. When he is sure that he had been granted a few moments of reprieve from the ache, he relaxes his hand and turns towards Hazel Grace, his fingers moving towards hers instinctively. He entwines his hand with hers that lay limp on her side, noticing that her nails are painted a dark blue – the conventional color of water; the thing that was killing her right now. She likes metaphorical resonances, too, he concludes.

'_Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed,'_ Van Houten had written to him the previous evening. Augustus smiles wryly, remembering it at that moment. He wonders whether Van Houten knows that he'd mastered the art of foreshadowing. Probably not.

Her hand is warm. Alive. He moves his fingers to her wrist and he can feel the thudding of her pulse against his skin, and next to the pulsating vein runs a thin, transparent tube, helping her somehow to sustain her beating heart. "My PET scan lit up, Hazel Grace," he whispers, looking at her serene face. "Like a Christmas tree."

She was like a child. He was like a Christmas tree. And he always thought similes are not as important as metaphors.

Her eyes remain tightly shut, and he does not expect her to respond, either. He closes his eyes, too, and he realizes that more than his own oblivion, he fears the absence of her in his life. What would Hazel Grace wish for? Probably her own death, before she sees him die. God knows that was what _he _had wished for, as he'd seen Caroline's life slowly disappear.

He tries to be selfless and imagines a life without _them._ He imagines two stars, as opposed to the two circles of a usual Venn diagram, one containing the name Hazel Grace, and the other, Augustus Waters. For so long in his mind, he'd held them close together, such that they always crossed one another. Now he gradually draws them apart, keeping them literally uncrossed. He imagines her dying as he holds her hand.

Her thumb twitches against his finger, and within a fraction of a second, the stars pull each other closer with such great force that they tangle into one. He knows that he would always be selfish in this respect, as he tightens his grip on her hand, not wanting her to die. And that left only one choice: she should see _him _die. The utter selfishness of his thought disgusts him, but he can't help it. He wants them to fall in love. He wants a _them._

Augusts Waters rarely cried, but now, he can feel the tears that his closed eyes are struggling to contain. He opens his eyes, watching two teardrops fall on her cheek. He moves his hand that is not entwined with hers, to wipe them away, but stops abruptly as he hears a voice behind him.

"Excuse me, sir, who are you?" The male nurse asks, frowning in confusion. "Visitors are not allowed," he adds.

The sudden change in the moment affects him, and he struggles to regain his composure, becoming nonplussed under the intense stare of the guy who looks at him suspiciously. "I, uh…" he stutters uncharacteristically. "I am a friend of hers."

The male nurse's gaze softens. "Family only," he explains. "Visitors not allowed," he repeats.

Augustus nods his understanding, and climbs off the bed slowly. "Is she doing okay?" he asks the nurse, his voice hushed. Suddenly his brain reminds him the significance of '_okay'_ and he clutches the mattress, seeking support, not just physically.

The guy looks at him sympathetically, shaking his head. "She's still taking on water." He points at the bladder, now half filled with the brown liquid.

Augustus nods again, his gaze returning to Hazel Grace. If time was a slut, love was a slut, too, for she screwed every heart, even the ones that were incapable of accomplishing their one designated function.

He finally reaches to wipe his tears off her cheek. He leans down and places a kiss on her forehead, and whispers against her skin, "Okay."

He pulls back and glances at the nurse, who moves away from the door to allow Augustus to leave the room.

He leaves her behind, knowing that their love would be their hamartia.

~.~.~

_A/N: I have an Augustus Waters fetish, too ;)_


End file.
